I'm crabby about cancer! My blog is the story of my participation in events for Team in Training to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
As a Hodgkin's lymphoma survivor from 2002, I want to give something back to show the gratitude that I have for surviving this disease. I completed my sixth Team in Training event in October 2013, and in September 2011, I walked 60 miles to raise money for breast cancer research! I'm living strong!

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

My Future World Record Marathon

Yep, you read it here first. Someday, most likely in 2021, I’ll be setting the world record in the men’s marathon. How do I know this? Simple mathematics! Let me explain.

I’ve done three marathons, the Midnight Sun in Anchorage in 2005, the Rock ‘N’ Roll in San Diego in 2006, and the P. F. Changs in Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Tempe in 2008. I walked the first two, and walked over 90% of the third one. Now I am starting to run more, and consider myself a runalker, so my time per mile is decreasing. Here are my times in those races:

If you will do the math, you will see that, on average, I knocked 22 minutes and 46 seconds off each successive marathon. So projecting this forward, as any intelligent person might, leads some fantastic future times. Of course, I am not scheduled to run a marathon right now, so let’s assume I start up again in 2011, and my time will be about 5 hours and 35 minutes. Then going forward, because I want that world record as soon as possible, I will crank out a marathon a year. This leads to some remarkable milestones in my racing career:

2013 – my first sub-five hour marathon2015 – I qualify for Boston2016 – my first sub-four hour marathon (in Boston)2018 – I break three hours, by a hair, for the first time2020 – I run a marathon in 2 hours 12 minutes, just missing the world record. Ethiopian and Kenyan runners are looking over their shoulder in fear. “Who is this old geezer?” they ask in wonder. It is possible I even get a medal in the Olympics that year.2021 – I shatter the word record at age 70. What a way to celebrate the big seven-OH! Sports Illustrated cancels its swimsuit issue to put me on its cover (but not in a swimsuit). Sales of Wheaties, with my photo on the box (but not in a swimsuit) go berserk!

But wait, there’s more! Now things start getting really incredible. In 2024 I win Olympic Gold in a new world, Olympic, and PR: less than 43 minutes. In 2025 I defy all reason by setting a new world marathon record in a shade under 20 minutes. Just for grins, I also win the Kentucky Derby, Belmont, and Preakness, leaving the world’s best thoroughbreds gasping in agony and shame. An enraged jockey tries to shoot me after the Preakness when I humiliate him and his horse. I’m not fast enough to beat a cheetah over 200 yards, but can easily beat one in a half mile race.

By 2026, I enter a marathon and win it before it even starts. At that point, age 75, I decide to slow down a bit and jog the Boston Marathon in about an hour and 5 minutes. It is time to hang up the running shoes and take it easy.

All it will take is me doing a marathon a year, and the application of simple mathematics. After all, it was Mark Twain himself that wrote the following: “In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

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Racing for a Cure and Living Strong!

About this blog

Every post prior to July 24, 2008 was written previously and posted in this blog as time allowed, starting in June. These posts describe my preparation for and participation in Team in Training for the 2008 Arizona Marathon. In addition, I've written about the May 2008 Susan G. Komen for the Cure in Richmond, Virginia. Posts from July 24 forward were written in the present, as I race to be a small part of finding a cure for the evil beast known as cancer!

Who Should our Role Models Be?

I believe that every day people doing every day things who are trying to do good in the world should be our true role models, not "sports heroes", actors and actresses, pop stars, politicians, super models, and other celebrities. Let them all do what they do best - which is athletics, acting, music, getting elected, modeling, and acting like celebrities. But unless they are a true role model, let's not pretend that they are simply because they can dunk a basketball or look great in a swim suit or win an Oscar. You and I are role models when we do something good in the world.